EDITIONS ARTLYS

Christian Dior: Man of the Century

Text by Jean-Luc Dufresne.

At once Dior scrapbook, survey and autobiography, this magnificent compendium offers a panorama of the life and art of one of the twentieth century's most influential fashion designers. It reprints Dior's 1956 autobiography Christian Dior et moi--in which the designer contrasted his reputation as both an individual and as a company with his own sense of himself--alongside eight articles by Dior first published in Elle magazine in 1951, which were then collected as Je suis couturier. Throughout, the volume takes as its thematic anchor the designer's beautiful childhood home in Granville, elaborating his lifelong attachment to the house (now the Christian Dior Museum) and its gardens, and showing how his work was influenced by these resplendent environs--a theme that especially preoccupied Dior himself, who once affirmed his "tender and wonderful memories of my childhood home," declaring that "my life and my style owe everything to its location and architecture." Many of the copious illustrations that accompany these writings are supplied by the Christian Dior Museum collection, and reproduce family albums and archival photographs, fashion sketches and formal presentations of classic Dior dresses, hats, shoes and jewelry. Dior scholar Jean-Luc Dufresne conducts a tour of the Dior house and garden, narrating its long and fascinating history.

Featured image, reproduced from Christian Dior: Man of the Century, is Orange rayon bolero jacket and cocktail dress embroidered with gold and silver dacron pine motifs, incorporating brassiere, designed by Daimaru exculsively for Japan under the Christian Dior label, circa 1958, from the Kyoto Costume Institute.

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FROM THE BOOK

"I looked at women, admired the shape of them, was aware of their elegance, like all boys my age; but I should have been very much astonished if anyone had prophesied that one day I should be a dress designer; that I should study, in the most complicated detail, how to cut, stretch, or drape materials and make them serve me in creating the models of my imagination.It was by chance that I began designing model creations in 1935.I was recovering from a long and serious illness. Finding myself in financial difficulties, I had to think seriously for the first time about earning a living.Banking? A government job? An ordered life with regular hours? All that was out of the question. I had not made up my mind just what I was going to do, but all the same I was determined to do something--in a word, to chance my way of life."

At once Dior scrapbook, survey and autobiography, this magnificent compendium offers a panorama of the life and art of one of the twentieth century's most influential fashion designers. It reprints Dior's 1956 autobiography Christian Dior et moi--in which the designer contrasted his reputation as both an individual and as a company with his own sense of himself--alongside eight articles by Dior first published in Elle magazine in 1951, which were then collected as Je suis couturier. Throughout, the volume takes as its thematic anchor the designer's beautiful childhood home in Granville, elaborating his lifelong attachment to the house (now the Christian Dior Museum) and its gardens, and showing how his work was influenced by these resplendent environs--a theme that especially preoccupied Dior himself, who once affirmed his "tender and wonderful memories of my childhood home," declaring that "my life and my style owe everything to its location and architecture." Many of the copious illustrations that accompany these writings are supplied by the Christian Dior Museum collection, and reproduce family albums and archival photographs, fashion sketches and formal presentations of classic Dior dresses, hats, shoes and jewelry. Dior scholar Jean-Luc Dufresne conducts a tour of the Dior house and garden, narrating its long and fascinating history.